Y2K Bug

It’s just gone midnight. Here we are. 1st of January 2000. And we’re all still alive. Which, to be honest, is a miracle because, in the words of the Purple One, we have been partying like it’s 1999 for the last seven months. Actually, I’m surprised we haven’t heard that song played more tonight. King of My Castle seems to have been playing on loop, though, and I can’t get the damn tune out of my head.

It’s fair to say, the millennium has been good for business. The consultancy I work at has been raking it in for the last couple of years, feeding off people’s fear that a little worm tucked away in their computer systems was going to destroy the world as midnight struck tonight. And Mo’s business has been raking it in when all those big corporate bigwigs go home and need something to help them unwind. To let loose. To let their hair down. To block out the fact they might lose their £500,000-a-year jobs if it all goes tits up tonight.

I’ve been off since the 24th of December. We’ve done everything we could do, which, in reality, was sod all because there were no hungry caterpillars merrily munching their way through binary digits until countdown. We've spent the last two years auditing systems, finding nothing, reassuring the bigwigs that we’d fixed the problem and charging extortionate sums for the pleasure. My bonus last year bought me the apartment out here. My bonus this year bought me the Porsche.

Tonight, on the other hand, is probably the biggest night of Mo’s life. The orders have been coming in thick and fast for the last two weeks. Two grams here, five grams there, ten grams somewhere else. Some celeb parties ordering a hundred grams or more. You should have seen what the latest It Girl ordered. Her nostrils will look like a colander in a few years. He had to start the deliveries out here three days ago. His business is apparently very easy to expand internationally. Most of the stupid snow shovellers have already had to reorder. So obvious they wouldn’t be able to save it for three days. But all the better for business.

We’re in Sinatra’s bar in Puerto Banús. There’s a large queue for the toilets. Nobody actually needs to pee. They’re all queuing for the loo thanks to Mo’s little packets. Little packets of white powder carefully wrapped up in folded lottery slips. He brought a stash of slips with him. He clearly wins more often than most punters who actually play the lottery. If you go to the loo, you’ll probably find enough residue on the cistern lid to cut yourself a line for free. Vile stuff. But clearly people love it.

I’ve avoided kissing as many drunk men as possible. And women. New Year’s Eve is bad enough at the best of times, but add in the fact that everyone thinks they’re going to die tonight, coupled with the amount they’ve been snorting up their noses, and it’s like a raving orgy. At least seventeen people I don’t know have already told me they love me, their pupils dilated like saucers and mouths cakey and dry. The lunatics have taken over the asylum tonight. I don’t love them back. But Mo loves their money. So I fake grin and nod and sidestep sour champagne kisses.

I am watching the fireworks, standing alone on the dockside amidst a throng of hundreds of anxious and excited party revellers. The chilly night air is filled with burnt gunpowder. The fireworks are impressive and go on for a full fifteen minutes, lighting up the sky with sparkling showers of glitter and starbursts, whistling, exploding and reverberating in my chest, to a chorus of synchronised oohs and aahs. Mo, of course, is in peak demand. I don’t get involved. That’s his business. I’m just standing here, head tilted skywards, pulling my pashmina tightly round my shoulders, shivering in my thin strappy dress that reveals my thin strappy underwear, the balls of my feet already on fire from my four-inch heels.

Just before 2 am Mo gets a call, and we have to go off to Joy’s bar. I’m not happy because my feet are really singing now, and it’s a ten-minute walk that’s like walking on shards of glass. But business is business. I’m especially not happy when Mo’s client tries to persuade him to stay by offering him an escort girl, who kindly offers for me to join her, with a knowing wink. Slut! But the most mortifying part is that she’s wearing the same dress as me. The ridiculously expensive Versace I bought especially for tonight, to see the new year in, in style. I wonder how many bugs she had to catch to earn hers. I hate to admit it, but it looks better on her.

It’s an excruciating twenty-minute walk back to the Porsche, and we head off to the Puente Romano, and then it will be Olivia Valére – it’s the usual circuit. In the Romano, a fat, sweaty bloke, possibly Scandinavian, who looks about sixty, asks me if I’m a working girl, whilst I’m standing at the bar waiting for Mo, who is off selling more gear. I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never heard this term before, and I initially tell him yes, thinking that he might want to know about all the millennium bugs that I'd just fixed and saved the world from. He looks nerdy enough. Or bigwiggy enough. Luckily Mo comes and rescues me. He thinks it hilarious and explains what working girl means. I’m mortified for the second time this evening. 

We’re nearly three hours in Olivia’s, during which time I probably see Mo for all of fifteen minutes. But he’s got us a table dancefloor side, with a bottle of Cristal. Not that I drink it. I’m the designated driver. Unfortunately, the table includes two of his clients who are talking to me incessantly about chicken satay – really - oblivious to the fact I am not in the least bit interested because, guess what? I’m vegetarian. They think I’m agreeing with them, but actually I’m just nodding my head to the music. King of My Castle has just come on again, but at least the DJ is doing some cool mashup with Barry White and the bongo drummer. I’m beginning to wish the millennium bug had been real after all.

Mo comes back to the table. He’s drinking Jack and Coke. He joins in the chicken satay chit-chat, and it’s obvious he’s been helping himself to a packet. Or two. This doesn’t bode well for how the night will end. Because it won’t end. It will drag on and on until sunrise. I sit and watch as he drinks Jack after Jack without getting drunk because of the frequent trips to the bathroom to powder his nose. The coke counteracts the booze, and the booze counteracts the coke, which means Mo can do this for days without sleep. And then invariably invites the world and his wife back to ours. On more than one occasion, Mo, in his delirium, has tried to start an actual orgy. Always a disaster when everyone is off their tits and mentally keen on the idea but physically incapable. I’ve actually gone and slept in the car twice to escape the debacle. Something I didn’t think through when I bought the Porsche.

Not tonight, Mo, I beg him. And maybe it’s because he got bored of Thai poultry, but he agrees, and we leave the club alone. Or maybe it’s because we’re the last to leave and everyone else has already gone home.

I’ll drive, I insist. But you can’t argue with a man coked up to his eyeballs. I’m terrified, of course. It’s 6:30 am now. Still dark. We don’t get two minutes down the road when we’re stopped at a police checkpoint.

The police are very practical about things. Like Spanish police are. A thousand euros on the spot fine, no paperwork, or be arrested. They can drive us to a cashpoint if needs be. Of course Mo is flush with cash. Or was. Now the police are. Then they tell me to drive home safely. Waving me off like parents.

By the time we pull into the driveway, the night sky is shedding some of its blackness and softening to a dark blue-grey. A bird starts to sing.

Mo pops two sleeping pills. I kick off my shoes, and my feet sigh in relief. The straps have cut angry red indents into my puffy ankles. I peel out of my dress and vow never to wear it again, tossing the dry-clean-only garment in the laundry basket. We stink of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol and sweat.

I tie my hair up and lie down next to Mo, who is splayed out in a way that he manages to take up nearly all the mattress on the enormous king-size bed. I have to fit myself into a crooked space around him. He asks me five times if I’ve locked the front door, before falling into a fitful sleep and kicking me in the shin. I narrowly avoid a punch just in time. I watch blood run from his nose and slowly spread across the Egyptian cotton pillow, as the sun peeks over the horizon. I’ll deal with it later. I know how to get the blood out easily now.

I get up and go and lie down on the sofa and pull the throw over me. I am falling asleep as the rest of the world is waking up to a brand new year. What an anti-climax.

I make a new year’s resolution. I’m giving up Mo.

Roll on 2001.